A Year Abroad
by vandenburgs
Summary: Hogwarts, 2019. Fourteen international students from all nine Wizarding schools that can be found around the globe arrive at Hogwarts for an entire year — a year in which they'll find new friends, horrid teachers, midnight sneak-outs to Hogsmeade and multiple perils that will tie them together like nothing else can.
1. Introduction

Neville couldn't help but sigh when Headmistress McGonagall peered up at him from her table.

"What is it now, Longbottom?" She asked, perhaps a bit too sternly for a woman who was supposed to treat her former student as an equal, at least ever since he became the school's permanent Herbology professor.

"I'm not entirely sure about this, Headmistress," he shrugged. "The timing isn't, well, great, and I do think we should discuss it again before — "

"Oh, no, no, I've taken care of that," McGonagall dismissed his words with a wave of her hand. "I've had very long conversations with each and every one of the Wizarding Schools' headmasters and headmistresses, and they have all agreed to it. The children will be here on September 1st, and that's the end of it. They'll enroll in our classes, they'll stay here all year, they'll sit their O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s if they must. But I believe this is going to be a _very_ enriching project for both sides, _Professor_ Longbottom." She stressed the thirty-nine-year-old's title, her brow rising ever so lightly.

Neville sighed yet again, but eventually nodded his head. "All right then. I'll — I'll take care of selecting the students who will be showing them around and staying with them, I suppose."

"Precisely, Mr. Longbottom," the Headmistress's lips twitched into a faint smile. "Make sure the house elves get their dormitories ready. One for the girls, one for the boys. I'm fairly sure they're going to love our school just as much as we do."

Neville nodded quietly and let his hands sink into his pockets, mumbling right before leaving the room, "If you say so, Professor."

* * *

_Hey there! I know I said I'd be away for a couple of weeks — which turned into two months because you know, uni completely took away all of my spare time. But alas, I'm back — and I just came up with a super duper idea for a new HP SYOC! So yeah, idk if this mini-prologue was of any help at all, but — the story's going to be set in 2019, and it's going to follow **fourteen exchange students **(one or two per each of the Wizarding Schools that can be found around the globe — there isn't a set number of characters that I'll be accepting per school, but I'd really like to have at least one from each) who will be staying at Hogwarts for an entire school year, with **two Hogwarts students** staying with them instead of joining their Housemates as they usually would. They'll be living together, fighting each other, making new friends, and most importantly . . . perhaps even defeating a bunch of evil creatures together!_

_Oh, and also, I intend for this story to feature a few of the OC's from my previous SYOC,_ A Twist In Time_, but only in very small supporting roles — so if you submitted a character for that one, it'd be lovely if you sent me one for this story too!_

_As for the schools, I have decided to use the seven Houses that have been confirmed to exist so far by J. K. Rowling, **plus two Houses that I decided to make up **because I didn't want to miss out on the possibility of getting more diverse, beautiful characters from those sides of the world. There's a lot of info on the seven canon ones on Pottermore, but here's a short list of them just in case you need to decide which one suits your character best:_

_1\. Beauxbatons Academy of Magic (Pyrenees, France): most of its students come from France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands or Belgium._

_2\. Castelobruxo (Amazonian rainforest, Brazil): its students come from all over Latin America._

_3\. Durmstrang Institute (Scandinavia, probably northernmost Sweden or Norway): willing to accept international students, but most of them come from northern and Eastern Europe (Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and so on)._

_4\. Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Mount Greylock, United States): students generally come from the United States or Canada._

_5\. Koldovstoretz (Russia): most of its students are Russian, although there is a fair share of Ukrainians, Belarusians and students from all over the Caucasus and Eastern Asia._

_6\. Mahoutokoro School of Magic (Iwo Jima, Japan): its students are fundamentally Japanese, although there might be a few Korean or Chinese ones._

_7\. Uagadou (Mountains of the Moon, Uganda): its students come from all over Africa._

_And as for the ones that I decided to make up..._

_8\. Makutu Academy (Iasoa, Vanuatu): its students come from all over Oceania and Southeastern Asia. It is one of the most diverse and magically interesting schools due to its students coming from either Western wizarding families or from traditional Oceanic tribes, who had their own rites and spells and eventually passed them on to their native and foreign students alike when the school opened back in 1875. Although most of its classes are taught in English, they tend to use spells that come from all sorts of native language, so they actively encourage learning those while at school too._

_9\. Sahar Almadrasa (Wadi el Rayan, Egypt): hidden behind one of the most majestic waterfalls in the Nile river, it is the school that most Islamic and Arab students attend, from Morocco to Pakistan. There are some Israeli, Lebanese, and Turkish students, too. They tend to excel at Potions, Transfigurations, and Ancient Egyptian, which is the language that a lot of their spells were created in._

_So yeah, that's it. The form's up in my profile page, and it'd be lovely if you could PM them to me as soon as possible because I'm dying to get this story started. So yeah — as per usual, please try to avoid submitting Mary Sues/Gary Stus and make sure to make your characters as unique and as interesting as possible!_


	2. Meet The Ensemble!

_**PROFESSOR NEVILLE LONGBOTTOM'S FILES**_

_**PROSPECTIVE EXCHANGE STUDENTS — 2019**_

**Sofia Alcázar • Year 7 • Instituto Mágico de Castelobruxo (Paramaribo, Suriname) • Pansexual**

_so let's let things come out of the woodwork  
__i'll give you my best side, tell you all my best lines  
__seeing me rolling, showing someone else love  
__dancing with our shoes off  
__know i think you're awesome, right?_

_(homemade dynamite — lorde)_

Sofia was born in a _não mágico_ (Muggle) household in Suriname, which made her upbringing a very traditional one, even to the degree of feeling somewhat scared by her own powers at first. Her mother is a ballerina who taught her everything she knows, which has made Sofia a very skilled dancer; her father, on the other hand, is a Medicine professor at university, which has made her interested in following a similar career path in the Wizarding World. She is open-minded and always willing to learn, and that was why she was chosen by her professors at Castelobruxo to participate in the exchange. She also excels at languages — Dutch and Spanish are the languages that she grew up with, but she's also fluent in Portuguese and English because those are the main languages that are used at Castelobruxo.

**Chione Arafa • Year 5 • Sahar Almadrasa (Aswan, Egypt) • Heterosexual**

_tell me again about how it hurts  
being awfully loud for an introvert_

_(monster — dodie)_

Born in a Pureblood family, Chione grew up surrounded by magical creatures and loving every aspect of their nature because of her father's job: he owns a small magical pet shop that Chione loves visiting whenever she's home. Her mother is a curse-breaker, disciplined and wise, and she passed on to her daughter her passion for ancient languages, which is Chione's speciality. Generally polite and soft-spoken, Chione is what you'd call a by-the-book introvert, but there's also a much more playful side to her once you get to know her — she loves teasing her friends and doing reckless things when people expect her to be the responsible voice of the group. She is interested in History and the origin of things, and even though she's a very intelligent girl she doesn't really care about her school grades, and would rather just learn about the things that she deems 'really necessary'.

**Ramona Castillo • Year 6 • Beauxbatons Academy of Magic (Valencia, Spain) • Lesbian**

_i wouldn't fall for someone i thought couldn't misbehave  
but i want you to know that i've had no love like your love_

_(nobody — hozier)_

Born in a Spanish magical household, Ramona grew up idolizing her older brother, Mateo, who went missing during her fifth year at Beauxbatons while on a mission as an Auror for the Spanish Ministry of Magic and was pronounced dead (with no body) shortly after. Her parents still haven't recovered from it, which has resulted in a rather strained relationship between the two of them and their younger daughter, who still refuses to believe that her older brother is really dead and feels the borderline obsessive need to find him. Aside from that, Ramona is a really lively, loud, fun-loving teenager who's obsessed with both Muggle football and Quidditch, and a natural troublemaker.

**Johan Faust • Year 6 • Durmstrang Institute (Wernigerode, Germany) • Heterosexual**

_all he ever wanted_  
_was to be someone in life that was just like_  
_"all i want is to just have fun,  
live my life like the son of a gun"_

_(pretty pimpin — kurt vile)_

A studious, disciplined young man born to a family of Pureblood wizards and witches who have traditionally taken care of the Wernigerode Wizarding Library, which is one of the most important ones in the world. He is quiet and soft-spoken, and some might say that he's even borderline obsessed with his studies and his performance at school — books are all he's known ever since he was a child, and he's more inclined towards them than actual spellmaking, which makes him come off as somewhat eccentric at a practice-oriented school like Durmstrang. Johan finds the Dark Arts particularly fascinating — not because he abides to the rules of those who use it, but because he finds it an endlessly fascinating matter, in spite of it being frowned upon outside of his home school. He's determined to make the most out of his exchange at Hogwarts, at least in the academic aspect of it.

**Henri Gainsbourg • Year 6 • Beauxbatons Academy of Magic (Paris, France) • Gay**

_white noise, what an awful sound  
__fumbling by rogue river  
__feel my feet above the ground  
hand of god, deliver me_

_(mystery of love — sufjan stevens)_

Henri is pretty much the quintessential French Pureblood wizard. He's intelligent, quick at spells, and only slightly boastful about it — he values his own knowledge and the way magic comes so easily to him, but he doesn't rub it in other people's faces. He is the only child and heir of a very wealthy lineage of French wizards and witches, which made his upbringing easy and very comfortable — he has never had a close relationship with his parents, but he tries to supply the lack of affection from them by hanging out with tons of people at school, where he is extremely popular and generally well-liked. He has an ample group of friends, but none of them are truly close to him, which is why he doesn't really mind going abroad for an entire year. Some would say he's a little stuck-up, but that's just him trying to get rid of his own insecurities — because, in spite of everything, all he wants is for someone to genuinely love and understand him.

**Jon Galanis • Year 7 • Koldovstoretz Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia) • Bisexual**

_trapped in a prism, in a prism of light  
__alone in the darkness, darkness of white  
__we fell in love, alone on a stage  
__in the reflective age_

_(reflektor — arcade fire)_

Born in a _Beszil _(Muggle) but very rich household, Jon grew up knowing absolutely nothing about the Wizarding World and focusing on what he thought would be his dream career — ballet dancing. He's often seen wearing ballet shoes, and still hasn't given up on it in spite of having to juggle his private practicing with his classes and being a normal teenager. He's fiercely independent and cares very little about what other people think of him, and excels at acting and pretending to care about things that aren't that important to him: generally, he's just a strong-willed, determined young man who intends to make the most out of his time at school and his ballet career all at once. Being the youngest out of five siblings, he has always felt the need to work harder in order to earn himself his parents' affection, always pushing their expectations on him (and his own) higher and higher.

**Ziv Harel • Year 6 • Sahar Almadrasa (Haifa, Israel) • Pansexual**

_and we're not bruised, they're just party tattoos  
__and that colourful mess is just colourful regret_

_(party tattoos — dodie)_

Ziv — or Zizi, as they enjoy being called by their close friends — is a non-binary young wizard from Israel who can be described as a relentless daydreamer, and tends to feel as though the imaginary world where no one's discriminated because of their gender, sexuality or blood status that they have made up in their head fits with the actual world that surrounds them. Despite their difficulty at focusing on the 'real' world or even asking for help when they're feeling upset or worried about something, Zizi's an exceptionally sociable person — they love being physically and emotionally close to people they care about, and they're extremely tolerating of everyone else's beliefs, ideas, sexuality, or blood as long as they're not hurting anyone else through it. They live in Haifa with their biological mother, who married a Mundane woman when Ziv was six.

**Vera Ivanov • Year 6 • Koldostorevtz Institute (Moscow, Russia) • Heterosexual**

_i'm always the first one to laugh when it hurts  
__i don't know what's worse  
__pretending to care with just words_

_(timberlands — empress of)_

Vera's a very smart, quick-thinking Half-blood witch who grew up in Moscow with her parents, who worked for the Russian Ministry of Magic, and her older sister Lena; her parents died shortly after Vera turned thirteen, so she's been living with her older sister ever since, in a much tighter economic situation and living in a much smaller apartment than the one they grew up in — Lena works three jobs, whereas Vera works at a _Bezsil_ shop near their house during the summer and tries to save up as much as possible from her scholarship to help at home. She's extremely loyal and kind, and is always willing to help her friends and trusted ones. She loves the outdoors, wandering around the school grounds and generally having a good time, but she also loves reading and learning new things.

**Miyako Kokishin • Year 6 • Mahoutokoro School of Magic (Tokyo, Japan) • Lesbian**

_then bow your head in the house of god_  
_and little girl, who do you think you are?_

_(moderation — florence + the machine)_

Born in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, Miyako grew up like any normal Japanese _izado-nashi _(Muggle) child would: she was raised by her father, who worked in the nearby Akihabara district selling various electronic parts, and as a result of that Miyako was constantly surrounded by _izado-nashi_ technology and scientific publications and magazines. She is incredibly gifted in electronics and has always been interested in finding a way to combine magic and _izado-nashi_ technology, regarding the more outdated aspects of the Wizarding World with a certain disdain ever since she got to Mahoutokoro. She hates all sorts of traditionalisms, and feels very strongly about the disregard that some wizards and witches feel towards the _izado-nashi_ world when there's plenty of useful things that they have managed to create without magic over the course of the years. She's generally introverted and borderline scared of socializing with new people because of how her beliefs have been met with wariness at her home school, but once she opens up to people she's surprisingly chatty and fun-loving.

**Calista "Callie" LeRoux • Year 6 • Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (New Orleans, USA) • Bisexual**

_you and me at the edge of the world_  
_with a pretty little smile for me to see_  
_new bright whites and a cage full of ice_  
_and a naked little canopy to feed my disease_

_(bright whites — kishi bashi)_

Callie is a Half-blood, but she grew up in the No-Maj world with her father and older brother Xavier after her mother passed away right after she was born. Because of her Dad's busy job at the New Orleans Police Department, she and her brother attended No-Maj elementary school, where she exceeded at gymnastics and art, but was still very much thrilled by the arrival of her letter from Ilvermorny. She's very independent, smart, and tries to always do her best at school, which she has never taken for granted after having grown up in the No-Maj world. She feels very close to her family, which is why she might struggle with the ocean between them — she has a cousin who attends Hogwarts because her family on her mum's side was English, but they're generally very entitled and even a little stuck-up about the way Callie's mum left London to marry an American Muggle, so her relationship with them is a rather detached one.

**Levi Locke • Year 6 • Makutu Academy of Magic (Sydney, Australia) • Heterosexual**

_pieces of piece in sun's peace of mind  
__but it's fun to fantasize_

_(ride — twenty-one pilots)_

Levi is esentally what you'd call a _ball of sunshine_. He's tall and well-built from Quidditch, but he's also just about the softest guy at Makutu — he is endlessly enthusiastic and optimistic, and loves getting involved in all sorts of adventures and social engagements, with very little conscience of physical boundaries when he's comfortable with the people around him. But he's also very perceptive, naturally clever, and emotionally eloquent, excelling at comforting people when they need it the most, even though he can also be a bit naïve at times. His biological dad died when he was really young, and he currently lives with his biological mother and her new wife, a Muggle; they adopted a Muggle girl when Levi was eight, and she became his little sister. He tends to stir up things wherever he goes due to his mischievous tendencies, but he's also extremely humble for a guy who's so popular and well-liked.

**Rhona Murphys • Year 6 • Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Memphis, USA) • Bisexual**

_but i throw myself from heights that used to scare me_  
_guess you're surprised i'm the puzzle you can't figure out_

_(don't kill my vibe — sigrid)_

The only child of a witch and a No-Maj, Rho grew up in Memphis and lived there until her parents got divorced and her mother began teaching Potions at Ilvermorny. She sort of became the mediator between her parents once they fell out, and had to adjust to her new lifestyle rather quickly, which didn't make the best impact on her mental health. Because of it, Rho has developed a very strong "don't mess with me" vibe — she is deemed as nearly untouchable by a lot of her schoolmates, but at the end of the day she's just extremely socially awkward and still trying to come to terms with the idea of her parents not being together anymore. She even suffers from social anxiety, which is something that she's trying to deal with, and because of it she doesn't really know how to behave around strangers at first, and that's why she can come off as cold or even stuck-up, with her being one of the top students of her year and having her mother around at school.

**Jade Pham • Year 6 • Makutu Academy of Magic (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) • Bisexual**

_what if their politics was just an idea of fun?_  
_i'd be scared, as one should, but i'd still feel so good_

_(feel so good — christine & the queens)_

Born to a Muggle couple who emigrated from Vietnam to Australia when she was really young, Jade's birth name was actually Phạm Thị Ngọc, but she changed it when her kindergarten classmates couldn't pronounce her name correctly. She's fluent in both Vietnamese and English, which she speaks with an Australian accent, and has always felt restrained by her very protective parents, who spoiled her to no end as a child but also expected her to become a doctor when she grew up — which they realized wouldn't happen when their only daughter sent all their silverware flying through the room in a fit of rage when she was eight years old. In spite of her relationship with her parents being a rather strained one, Jade is a very enthusiastic, outgoing person, and also extremely compassionate and selfless — she is very passionate about her interests and always works hard to achieve her goals, which is why she doesn't understand how people can be passive about pretty much anything. She's also got a very strong moral compass and is always willing to defend her ideas and what she deems fair.

**Milo Sætre • Year 7 • Durmstrang Institute (Stockholm, Sweden) • Heterosexual**

_stay out super late tonight  
__picking apples, making pies  
__put a little something in our lemonade  
__and take it with us  
__we're half awake in a fake empire_

_(fake empire — the national)_

Milo was born to a couple of Swedish Aurors who were fascinated by the _nejmagi_ (Muggle) world, and that was why he and his little sisters (Noora and Agnes) attended a normal elementary school until he got his letter from Durmstrang. There he was shocked to find out that most of his classmates were only slightly wary of the _nejmagi _world and of all the culture that Milo had come to cherish, which unconsciously made him despise the more practical-oriented classes and focus on the more theoretical ones, such as Astronomy, Ancient Runes, or History of Magic. In fact, he isn't all too keen on magic — he'd rather spend most of his day reading and translating, which is his true passion — he has come to master all Scandinavian languages and is also fluent in Russian, German, English, and a couple of Slavic languages, which has made him want to pursue a career in translation from Ancient Runic to modern-day European languages, or perhaps something related to Magical Linguistics. He's calm, very nice and loyal, and has a soft spot for people who understand and appreciate the more theoretical aspects of magic rather than boast about being able to conjure this or that up.

**Tulio Serafim • Year 7 • Instituto Mágico de Castelobruxo (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) • Gay**

_i've been sleeping with the light on_  
_i tend to freak myself out_  
_will you come a little closer now and tell me i'm a_  
_scrawny motherfucker with a cool hairstyle_

_(scrawny — wallows)_

Tulio is a Half-blood, but was brought up by a _não mágica_ single mother after his wizard father abandoned them when Tulio's mother got pregnant. However, he was soon put in charge of his aunt and uncle — who were also _não mágicos_ — because of his mother's drug addiction, which is why he tends to refer to his aunt and uncle as "mum" and "dad" and doesn't really know his mother that well, and also considers his older cousin, Alda, his sister. The harsh context in which he was brought to the world hasn't made him think any less of himself, though: he is a fun-loving, loud boy who is also known to be a bit mischievous and who's always willing to think outside the box and in the most creative of ways. He has a thick accent when speaking English, but he never makes a big deal out of it — he just grins and jokes about his own inability to find the precise word in English when he's speaking.

**Antoinette South Xanthopoulos • Year 6 • Makutu Academy of Magic (Blue Mountains, Australia) • Bisexual**

_my hands are cold but my feet are not_  
_are you leaving me or have you just forgot?_  
_because in the end, we were never friends but more_

_(everyday's the weekend — alex lahey)_

South was born to a couple who spent the first years of the young girl's life moving around constantly because of their job as travel journalists, which resulted in South being homeschooled for most of her childhood and learning things from reading or her mother's brief classes. When she was eight, she moved to her Uncle Orion's and stayed there while her parents went abroad once again, which allowed her to make a few friends and live a more normal life — which also meant resenting the fact that her parents had left her behind every now and then. Still, she lived a generally happy childhood until she got her letter from Makutu, which forced her to make a new change in her life, but ended up making her fall in love with the Wizarding World and the little island where she went to school for the next six years. South is a fiercely adventurous person, naturally mischievous, and what you would call a major troublemaker, and she can hardly stay put due to her wild nature and her thirst for knowledge, which has often driven her into the wildest situations.

* * *

_Hi! First off, thank you so much to each and every one of you who have taken the time to send me a character for this story — I wish I could have accepted every single one of them, but I had to be real selective for this one because I didn't want to work with too many characters in order for the story to work. So yeah, I hope I got a correct first impression of your characters, and please let me know if I didn't! Oh, and I also took the liberty of adding a song that I thought fitted the character's personality — I tend to do that a lot, so please bear with me._

_I also wanted to say that this list is **subject to change** if the authors go M.I.A. or ignore my story altogether. I don't want to get all bossy and you absolutely don't have to review every single chapter or let me know how I'm doing 24/7 — but my last SYOC had 14 characters and only like three of the authors actually followed the story, so I want to make sure that doesn't happen again. So yeah, I really value feedback from you guys, because that's the only way I can know whether I'm doing this correctly._

_Okay, rant over. Please let me know if you've detected any potential friends/enemies/love interests for your character, and any suggestions that you may have! Chapter one should be up sometime this week — I'm really excited about it, tbh! :)_


	3. September 1st (Part I)

_hey! quick note just to clear things up — I added a new character to the original list (Ziv) whose form got sent in a little later, so make sure you go check that out in case you feel confused about their sudden appearance here! We also had to change Zia's name to Vera, but she's still the same character. That being said — hope you enjoy the very first chapter of our story!_

* * *

_jumping up and down the floor  
my head is an animal  
and once there was an animal  
it had a son that mowed the lawn  
the sun was an ok guy  
it had a pet dragonfly  
the dragonfly it ran away  
but it came back with a story to say_

**dirty paws — of monsters and men**

* * *

Chione had always hated going to Cairo.

Granted, she loved visiting the National Museum, and there was something about the city's dusty streets that fascinated her to no end when the sun went down and nearly everyone went home, allowing her to roam the unpaved streets like a tourist would. But Cairo was the biggest labyrinth that she had ever found herself stuck in, and she hated feeling trapped or lost in the middle of its never-ending crowds whenever she visited the city with her mother.

And yet, she couldn't help but grin when she saw the Pyramids from afar, her dad's magic carpet slowing down as they approached the archaeological complex.

"I think Ziv got here earlier in the morning, _baba_," she explained excitedly. "They told me they had a huge journey ahead of them. They're from Haifa, you know? That's . . . well, really far away from here."

"I know, _habibi_," her father replied in a kind tone. Even though he still couldn't quite understand why his daughter kept referring to her schoolmate as a "they", he tried not to question it too much. "Should we park somewhere over there?" He signaled towards a clearer area, and smiled when his daughter nodded enthusiastically. He knew how ecstatic Chione felt about going abroad — Ghadi knew that she hadn't stopped skipping around their house back in Aswan ever since she got her acceptance letter from her home school, Sahar Almadrasa. But he still couldn't quite wrap his head around the idea of his little girl being away for an entire year — sure, she boarded at Sahar Almadrasa during the school year, but the _madrasa_ was only a few miles away from their town and Chione usually came home every other weekend. She was only _fifteen_, for Zoroaster's sake! What was she going to do all alone for an entire year?

"_Baba_, that's _Mudaris_ Hadjal!" exclaimed Chione, which made her father lose his train of thought. She grinned and waved at her Transfiguration teacher, who was to escort them to London through the portkey that had been sent to them by the Egyptian Ministry of Magic. "_Marhaban_!" Once the two of them reached the ground, Chione offered her teacher a big smile and went off to greet him while her father stayed behind and rolled up their magic carpet.

"_Marhaban_, _alsyd_ Arafa," the teacher said politely before kissing each of Chione's father's cheeks as they shook hands, once Jafaar walked up to his daughter and her teacher. "It's a pleasure to meet you. Chione is one of our brightest students."

"She really is something, isn't she?" Jaafan replied, a half-smile on his lips. When his daughter complained about how they were just being _downright unrealistic_, he just laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "Well, why shouldn't I be proud of my little girl? It's never a bad moment to remind you of it — especially when you're going to be away for so long."

"That is very true," _Mudaris _Hadjal agreed. "Ziv should be here anytime, they forgot — "

"_Mudaris _Hadjal! I found it! I found it!"

Chione laughed when she recognized her classmate's voice as they made their way towards the three of them. They were in the year above her, but Sahar Almadrasa was a small school and actively encouraged their students to get to know the student body even if they were older or younger than them.

"Hey, Chione!" Ziv said brightly once they had trotted up to the rest of the group, and enveloped her in a warm hug — they weren't even that close, but Chione was aware of how physically affectionate Ziv could be sometimes. "How are you? I've been here since dawn, which feels like _forever_, honestly. My mums brought me here earlier and then went to visit Cairo — they've never been here, you know? Which is insane, actually, because Miriam's always worked for a Mundane travelling company . . . oh, and you must be _alsyd_ Arafa! How very nice to meet you." Ziv grinned up at Chione's father, who pushed up his glasses and shook their hand and kissed their cheeks with an amused smile on his face.

Once they sauntered off to tell _Mudaris_ Hadjal all about the t-shirt that they thought they'd forgotten at home, Jafaar leaned towards his daughter and whispered, "Is she always this . . . talkative?"

"_They_ are a very nice person to be around, _baba_," Chione replied, stressing her schoolmate's pronoun.

"All right, all right, I'm just saying she's — _they're_ — a bit . . . overenthusiastic?"

"Why shouldn't they be? I've never been abroad before, and I don't think they have either," Chione grinned brightly at the sole idea of leaving her country for the first time in her life. "It's going to be plenty of fun!"

"I'm sure it will, _habibi_," her father nodded and pressed a kiss to her head. He then placed his hands on the girl's shoulders, a more serious tone in his voice as he spoke again, "But listen, I want you to be really careful. You're going to an entirely new country, and people . . . well, people can be a little mean sometimes when you're not like them. Just — be careful, all right, _habibi_? I want you to have plenty of fun and to get to know people from all around the world, yes, but I also want to have you back as soon as possible."

"All right, _baba_," Chione nodded, a soft smile on her lips. The girl stood on her tiptoes and hugged her father by the neck, which caught Jafaar by surprise. "I'm really going to miss you and mama."

"Oh, we'll miss you too, _habibi_," he whispered, hugging her in return. "We love you, all right? We really do."

"I know, _baba_."

"Chione! Are you ready?" Ziv asked as they trotted up to their classmate and her father. "_Mudaris _Hadjal says everything's ready, and that we'd better get going if we want to see some of London before going to Hogwarts."

"Yes, I'm coming!" Chione replied, and grinned one last time at her dad before picking up her bags. "See you in a bit, all right?"

"See you in a bit, Chi."

His father smiled one last time before the girl joined her teacher and Ziv by the portkey, and even felt a little pang of sadness when the three of them disappeared in front of him, a brownish cloud of dust flying around the place where his only daughter had last stood.

* * *

"This is so dull I think I might die."

Henri's eyes glanced up from the book that he was currently reading, but he just sighed and went back to it when he saw that Ramona had lied down on the floor of the carriage and was making all sorts of dying whale noises as she moved around. "_T'es vraiement comme une fille petite_, Mona."

"_Gilipollas_," Ramona snapped, which made Henri scrunch his nose at her. They didn't share a first language — Henri's was French, Ramona's was Spanish — but they had both grown accustomed to hearing random words in both languages at school, so they were perfectly aware of what the other was saying at all times. Ramona sat up and eyed the carriage curiously before adding, "I can't believe we're travelling in a _pink and purple_ carriage. No wonder the rest of the world thinks we're all stuck-up and snobby."

"It honestly isn't that bad," Henri replied, putting his book down for once. _An Advanced Study of the Scottish Skies_, by the English astronomer Cornelius Bigglewater. "It's just a couple of hours until we get there, Mona."

"But I want to get there _now_," the girl pleaded, placing her hands on her own cheeks in a rather dramatic way. "I _need_ to get there and jump off this carriage and run around the forest and see all the cute English girls who are going to be there and eat tons of roast beef and — "

"Okay, okay, I get it," Henri said, rolling his eyes ever so lightly. Ramona exasperated him to a certain degree, but he was used to her antics — they had been Housemates back at Beauxbatons for the past six years and they shared a lot of common friends, after all. "Weren't you dating Camille, though?"

"Camille? You've got to be _joking_," Ramona rolled her eyes as though he had just said the stupidest thing in the world. "Camille and I . . . we hooked up, but she claimed to be, and I quote, '_going through a phase_'."

"Merlin, that's the absolute _worst_," Henri agreed, shaking his head a little. "That's what happened to me with that Maarten guy, remember? The one in the year above us from Utrecht?"

"Whoa, I didn't know that Maarten was into guys? And that you'd hooked up with him?" Ramona immediately took a seat next to him, her eyebrows rising in curiosity.

"And he isn't. Or at least he claims that he isn't," Henri chuckled. "Although he _did_ look quite pleased with himself back in that broom closet."

"I can't believe it," Ramona had to cover her mouth with her hand to stifle a laugh. "You _shagged_ Maarten Jensen, who's just about the straightest guy at school. I salute you, my friend."

"Yeah, I guess I did," Henri chuckled, shrugging his shoulders. He didn't quite know how he managed to attract nearly every single handsome young man that he ever felt even remotely interested in into his orbit, but he ended up earning their attention more often than not. Even Ramona, who was fully into girls, couldn't help but think that her classmate was perfectly irresistible, and understood how both girls and boys would easily fall for his black curls and big green eyes. She wasn't bad herself, though — slightly tanned, tall and with chocolate brown hair, and somewhat known for being a bit of a flirt, although it didn't come quite as naturally to her as it did to Henri — she had to make an _effort_, whereas he had grown accustomed to having whatever he wanted without having to do so much as open his mouth to request it. The result of a pampered childhood, she supposed.

"I'm sure you'll find yourself a nice English gentleman this year," the girl winked at him suggestively, trying not to erupt into laughter yet again.

"Who knows," Henri chuckled, shaking his head. "I think I'd rather just help you find a nice English young lady for yourself, Mona."

"Ah, but I don't need your help, _monsieur_ Henri," she replied, an amused tone to her voice. "I can take care of my own conquers."

"All right, then. I'll just eat crumpets and gaze at the sky and complain about how absolutely _horrid_ their cooking is."

"Sounds like something you'd do, yes."

They both chuckled softly, and with that Ramona returned to the floor and started complaining yet again, and Henri picked up his book and resumed his reading. And both of them thought, with amused smiles on their faces, that their year at Hogwarts was bound to be interesting if they had each other by their side.

* * *

The Durmstrang ship usually carried between thirty and fifty students within its walls whenever it sailed, but on September 1st, 2019, only two of them could be found aboard the school's official ship. And they both, coincidentally, happened to be huddled in two separate couches — one fully engrossed in a book about Grindelwald, and the other one crouched over a table and working on what looked like a translation. Milo and Johan had met up with their Headmaster near Helsinki, where they had boarded the school ship on their own — it had been charmed to automatically take them to Hogwarts, and they had spent two full days at sea already without exchanging much information with each other. After all, neither of them was exactly talkative, and they felt comfortable enough that way.

"How's the reading going?" Milo asked, his Swedish accent intertwining with the words when he spoke them out loud. The school's official language was German, which came to Milo nearly as easily as his native Swedish, but he still struggled with the accent sometimes.

"Good," Johan replied, perhaps a bit too curtly. When his schoolmate pursed his lips, he awkwardly added, "It's interesting. I mean, the fellow _did_ manage to start a whole political movement within the Wizarding world."

"Yeah, I guess," Milo shrugged, unsure of what to say. Sweden had remained neutral during the two Wizarding Wars, and he wasn't exactly fond of Grindelwald from what they had learned at school. The fact that their History of Magic _Lehrer_ was a bit of a blood elitist and seemed to agree with most of Grindelwald's predicaments didn't really help, either.

Johan's eyebrows rose ever so lightly. Durmstrang students tended to be fairly conservative, so he had never found himself in the need of questioning the legitimacy in reading a book on a powerful wizard, whichever his political orientation may have been. He had never hung out with Milo before — he was in the year above him — but he had always respected him for his academic performance and the way their Ancient Runes _Lehrerin_ would always talk wonders about him. Still, it surprised him to hear something like that coming out of a clever student's mouth.

"What're you translating?" He asked finally, in a more conversational tone.

Milo glanced at him before crouching over his piece of parchment yet again. "Uh, a fifteenth-century Runic novel. It's actually a fairly new discovery — they thought all the manuscript copies had been lost in a fire back in 1702, but apparently they found one near Malmö back in June . . . it's just for fun, you know, but it's still interesting."

Johan nodded. "_Ja_. We've got a lot of manuscripts back in Weirnigerode, and I love it when my _Väter _allows me to take a look at them." A faint gleam of pride crossed his eyes when he thought of his family's work at the city's Wizarding library. "It's . . . it's just fascinating, honestly. Makes you feel aware of how nimious and small we are in the greater scheme of things."

_"__We are such stuff as dreams are made on_," mused Milo distractedly, with a heavy Swedish accent that appeared whenever he spoke English.

"Shakespeare, right?" Johan did a half-smile when his schoolmate's eyebrows rose in surprise. "I may be a Pureblood, but I've read my Muggle authors. His concept of magic and wizardry is pretty fascinating, to be honest."

"Yeah, it is," Milo replied softly, a small smile on his lips. "I used to be obsessed with his plays when I was a little younger. I went to a _nejmagi_ school before Durmstrang, you know."

Johan's eyebrows rose. "I thought your parents were both magical? Someone told me they worked at the Ministry back in Sweden."

"Yeah, they do," Milo shrugged, even though he knew that a magical child with magical parents attending a _Nejmagi_ school wasn't exactly common, much less amongst those who latter attended Durmstrang. "They just thought we should get to know their world before plunging ourselves into ours, because we're no better or worse than them." He could sense the light surprise in Johan's eyes, so he just smiled coyly and added, "I don't know, I've never regretted it. I got to learn a bit of _Nejmagi_ literature and a few languages and my basic Math, so it's all right."

"That's . . . interesting." Johan nodded finally. If there was something that defined him, that was the way he valued knowledge — and _Nejmagi _knowledge, regardless of how alien it was to him, was still knowledge nevertheless, he reckoned. "It's got to be good if it introduced you to Shakespeare, then." He ran an awkward hand through his strawberry-blond hair, still looking a little pensive.

Milo, on the other hand, did a half-smile and shrugged before lowering his gaze, focusing on his translation yet again. Out of all the people from their school that he could have been stuck with for an entire year, he thought quietly, Johan wasn't all that bad.

* * *

Rhona could have sworn that she gaped the first time that she stepped into Hogwarts.

She wasn't easy to impress, mind you. She usually went about her day feeling mostly indifferent about what surrounded her — there might have been certain things here and there that sparked her curiosity, but she was known for being a rather stoic person. What her classmates called a 'resting-bitch-face' was the mask that she usually wore around strangers; seldom did she feel comfortable enough not to act relentlessly unbothered by her surroundings. That was why she rolled her eyes ever so lightly at the excited smile on Callie's lips, in spite of the feeling of anticipation that rushed over her as soon as the silhouette of the woman who now took care of the British Wizarding school appeared through the corridor.

"Is that — that's Professor McGonagall!" Callie murmured excitedly. A much softer girl than Rhona, she couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed — in a very positive way, of course — by the walls of the castle that now surrounded them. "She fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, you know. I've read that she's been her for over a century."

"Sure," Rhona said, shrugging her shoulders. Her eyes darted around the corridor, struggling not to marvel at the antiquities that hung from its walls. Ilvermorny, after all, was a relatively new school compared to Hogwarts — it was founded in 1627, whereas Hogwarts went back to 990 CE, which didn't even feel like a _real_ date to begin with.

"Well, if it isn't our first guests to arrive," McGonagall offered them both a small, yet kind smile once the two girls had gotten up to her. Her gaze was just as mysterious as it looked like when she had looked her up in the Wizarding Encyclopedia, Rhona thought bemusedly. "It's such a pleasure to meet you. I am Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and will from now on be in charge of your well-being for as long as you remain with us at Hogwarts."

"Nice to meet you, Professor," Callie said, an enthusiastic edge to her voice. Rhona, a little taken aback by how warm their new Headmistress was being to them, simply nodded and shrugged her shoulders, mumbling a rushed 'pleasure' as she shuffled to pick up her backpack.

"I hear that your dormitories aren't quite ready yet," McGonagall explained, an apologetical expression on her face. "We weren't expecting you until later tonight — our students haven't arrived yet, you see, and our house elves are still getting everything ready. But one of them will show you up to your common room, which you will share with the rest of our exchange students, and you may stay there and have some tea and biscuits until the rest of the group arrives."

"We didn't mean to arrive this early, Professor," Callie explained. "We . . . well, our Headmaster thought it'd be best if we used a keyport, but we . . . well, we didn't keep time zones in mind, I'm afraid."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all, miss . . . " McGonagall's eyebrows rose ever so lightly, as though inviting the girls to tell her their names.

"LeRoux! Calista LeRoux, that's me."

When the Headmistress's eyes fell on her, Rhona said in a quiet tone, "I'm Rhona Murphys, ma'am."

McGonagall nodded, and then tilted her head towards a little house elf who was now making its way towards the girls' luggage. "Bubblie will take you to your common room now, if that's all right. If you'll excuse me . . . "

"Absolutely!" Callie said quickly. "Pleasure to meet you, Headmistress."

Rhona couldn't help but roll her eyes yet again when her classmate beamed at their new Headmistress before she disappeared down the corridor. It wasn't like she knew Callie that well — they had been classmates for six years at Ilvermorny, but they'd never shared a common group of friends, and they hardly had anything to do with each other aside from the fact that they were two of the smartest students in their Year. Rhona admired those who could fend for themselves and who were clever enough to make it through school with nearly impeccable grades, but she also felt somewhat irritated by the sickly sweet kind of girl that Callie looked like every now and then. All smiles and enthusiasm, combining combat boots with flowery tops and a uniform-like skirt. Who _did_ that, anyway?

"It's so weird that they don't have pukwudgies here!" Callie commented, a friendly tone in her voice as they both followed the house elf down the corridor. "I mean, it's funny how they just use house elves instead — "

"Yeah, so much for enslavement! Woohoo!" Rhona retorted. When Callie's brow furrowed, she just shrugged and added, "I mean, I've never really gotten how y'all act so progressive then just force non-human creatures into doing all the shitty stuff that you don't want to do. No-Majs can live without slaves _or_ magic, so I guess we could at least spare them from all the working? For free?"

Now it was Callie's turn to roll her eyes. "Don't look at me, I've never owned a pukwudgie. My Dad's a No-Maj, so."

Rhona's eyebrows rose. The American Wizarding society had changed a lot in the past century, but mixed marriages were still somewhat frowned upon by certain families, so she wasn't really used to hanging out with people who had a No-Maj parent like she did.

"My Dad's a No-Maj too," she said, in a much softer tone that undoubtedly caught Callie offguard. Rhona was, after all, their year's _'shrew to be tamed_', as a No-Maj-born classmate of theirs had once put it. "I . . . he lives down in Memphis, that's where I was born."

"Oh," Callie even seemed to smile at that. "That's funny. My Dad lives in New Orleans, and I really do miss him a lot."

"Yeah, school can really suck in that sense." Rhona refrained herself from letting her classmate know about how she got to see her mother on a daily basis because she had in fact become their Potions teacher right after her parents got divorced, and instead did a small smile as she fiddled with her backpack strap. "It's good to know that we've stuff in common, you know."

"Yeah," Callie agreed, a faint smile on her face. "Good to know."

And it would be, after all.

* * *

_All right, so! I originally planned for all fourteen students to be introduced in the first chapter, but the fragments were just _way_ too lengthy so I decided to split them into two chapters just so we could delve a little more into each school before actually getting the story started. The second chapter's gonna include all the students from Koldovstoretz, Makutu, Castelobruxo, and Mahoutokoro, plus a brief general perspective including our three Hogwarts mentors! Two of them were also in my first SYOC (A Twist In Time), but I'm fairly sure you don't need to read that one to get what's going on with them. But anyway! Hope you've enjoyed the first chapter, and I also hope I've portrayed your characters correctly — please do let me know how you feel about it. :D_


	4. September 1st (Part II)

_but if i wait for a holiday  
__could it stop my fear?  
to go away on a summer's day  
never seemed so clear_

**holiday — vampire weekend**

* * *

Tulio's first reaction upon their arrival at their new common room was, of course, checking how comfortable the couches were.

He and Sofia had arrived a little earlier than expected, because they, like Callie and Rhona, had left their home school in the middle of the night and hadn't really given the fact that Britain was in an entirely different time zone much thought. He was surprised to find that they weren't the only ones who were a bit too early, though. They'd been told that two other exchange students — the girls from Ilvermorny, a house elf kindly explained to them as she showed them to their common room — had arrived right before them. One of the girls was nowhere to be seen, but the other one was now chatting with Sofia in a rather amiable way.

"So your school is in Brazil, right?" she asked brightly, with a heavy American accent that reminded Tulio of his classmates who came from Puerto Rico and other countries where English was nearly as common as Portuguese or Spanish. "That's . . . incredible! Where is it, exactly?"

"It's in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest, really," Sofia explained. There was a gentle smile on her face, which Tulio recognized almost instantly as the one that she usually put on whenever she was around the _primeiro ano _students back at Castelobruxo, where she had been a _Prefeita_ for the past two years. "We're not entirely sure if it's in Brazil or Peru, or perhaps even Bolivia. We usually get there from Manaus on these giant canoes that take us all the way down the river to our school."

"Yeah, and we usually get to fool around with the _caimanes_ and scare some of the _primeiro ano _students off," Tulio joked, laughing a little. When Callie tilted her head in confusion, he added, "A _caiman_ is sort of like . . . a crocodile? Yeah, sort of. Well, not a crocodile . . . " His brow furrowed as he tried to find the exact word, but eventually gave up and looked at Sofia. "Hey, _qual é a palavra em inglês para caimán?_"

"Alligator!" Sofia said brightly. "Yeah, it's like a South American alligator, sort of."

"Cool!" Callie nodded, smiling at the way her two new classmates had made a quick exchange in what she supposed was their native language. "So do you guys speak Portuguese all the time over there?"

"We do at school, mostly," Tulio said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's my first language, but I do know how to speak Spanish too because most of my friends come from Spanish-speaking countries like, you know, Colombia or Argentina or Chile or Peru. But Sofia's first language is Dutch! Right, Sof?" He jerked his thumb at the girl.

"Well, yeah," Sofia replied with a humble shrug. "My family and I usually speak Dutch at home, but my _não mágico_ school was a Spanish-speaking one, so I grew up handling pretty much both of them, plus English as a second language. Then I ruined my cousin's _quinceañera_ dress by shredding it to pieces in a fit of rage without having touched it and, _ta-daah_, I was on my way to Castelobruxo and learning Portuguese thanks to this one." She jerked her thumb back at Tulio, who just did a toothy grin and leaned back on the couch. It wasn't like they were close friends, but they were both on the more extroverted side of their Year, and had therefore gotten to spend a lot of time together back at Castelobruxo.

"That's so fascinating," Callie mused. "I wish I spoke more languages, to be honest."

"It's no big deal, really," Tulio shrugged his shoulders and offered her a friendly smile before closing his eyes. The house elf had told them that their dormitories weren't quite ready yet, so he gathered that the people of Hogwarts wouldn't mind him taking a short nap on the sofa before the rest of the students arrived. It had been quite a long journey, after all.

"So where's the other girl from your school?" Sofia asked. She then did a mischievous smile and leaned forward to pull at one of Tulio's black bangs, which resulted in the boy yanking up from his half-acquired slumber and a rather hysterical laughter from the two girls as he mumbled something about being tired and Sofia's sense of humor being _absolutamente estúpido_.

"Well, she . . . I think she wanted some alone time?" Callie shrugged her shoulders, feeling a little awkward all of a sudden. After all, her relationship with Rhona was nowhere as good as the one that Sofia and Tulio seemed to share. "I don't really know her that well, so."

"Aw, well, we'll keep you company until the rest of the group arrives," Sofia said, a warm smile on her face. When Callie beamed back at her, she added, "I'm sure the rest of the group will be lovely, don't worry."

"Yeah, and hopefully a little more concerned about my sleep schedule," Tulio grumbled from the sofa.

Sofia giggled yet again, but glanced up when someone entered the room. She was surprised to find a small, black-haired girl with Eastern Asian features who was already wearing a Hogwarts uniform like the ones the house elves had handed them a little earlier. The girl did a feeble smile, her cheeks a blotchy red, and awkwardly waved at them from the entrance.

"Hi!" Sofia said. "You must be one of the exchange students too, right?"

"Ye . . . yeah," the girl said, her tone just as awkward as Sofia had expected it to be. "I'm Miyako."

"Oh, you must be the girl from Mahoutokoro, right?" Callie asked brightly. When the girl nodded quietly, she grinned and patted on the chair next to hers. "Come over, we were just getting to know each other a little. I'm Callie, and I'm one of the Ilvermorny students."

Miyako shook the girl's hand, albeit a bit doubtfully, and took a seat next to her. "Nice to meet you, Callie."

"I'm Sofia," the other girl said, then jerked her thumb at her schoolmate. "And the dying morse over there is Tulio, but he's pretending to be asleep as of right now."

"I _was _asleep," the boy complained from the couch, still refusing to open his eyes. "For a split second, you know."

Miyako's cheeks immediately turned a bright red, and ducked her head. "_Sumimasen_."

"Oh, no, it's no big deal," Sofia said reassuringly. She placed a hand on Miyako's shoulder, but removed it when the girl trembled ever so lightly — she was very used to physical contact, but she gathered that perhaps the other girl wasn't. "Tulio's just a bit _overdramatic _sometimes."

"Oh. Oh." Miyako nodded quickly, and then did a shy smile. "It's all right. I just got here, you see — I came on a Japanese dragon all the way from Tokyo."

"Well, that's quite the journey, isn't it?" demanded Callie. "We used a portkey to get here."

"Yeah, us too," Sofia agreed. "But it must've been amazing to fly all over Asia and Europe, right? Plus Japanese dragons tend to be really tame and sweet — it must've been a lovely journey."

"Yeah," Miyako said, nodding her head. She then added, in a more feeble tone, "How come you know so much about Japanese dragons?"

"We do _tons_ of Care of Magical Creatures-related stuff back at our school," Tulio explained from the couch (his eyes, of course, still firmly closed). He rolled on his back and did a lopsided grin. "The Amazonian rainforest is pretty much the ideal place to set a bunch of kids loose while playing around with all sorts of creatures, I suppose."

Miyako nodded politely, her expression still clearly awkward, then fiddled with her uniform skirt as her eyes fell to the ground. Tulio covered his face with one of the multiple cushions that surrounded him, and Callie and Sofia shared a sympathetic glance. They were both fairly extroverted, but understood that it probably required a lot of effort from Miyako to be there, interacting with people that she had only just met.

"You know what?" Callie said. "I think I'm gonna go check the dorm out. Wanna come with me, Miyako?"

The girl glanced up at her, looking genuinely surprised by the fact that the other girl had remembered her name. "Um . . . sure!" A small smile spread across her lips as she stood up and followed Callie, who waved a warm goodbye to Sofia and promised to catch up with her later.

"See you two in a bit!" Sofia said. When she found herself on her own with a seemingly asleep Tulio, she poked him with her toe and said in Portuguese, "C'mon, you jerk, it really hasn't been that terrible."

"Just let me be," Tulio moaned. "I'm tired. I don't want to go to _theoretical classes_, Sof, why did we sign up for this."

"I'm sure they'll be fun enough," she said reassuringly as she took a seat on the couch. When Tulio placed his legs on top of her lap, she squirmed and giggled ever so lightly. "You really are the worst, you know."

"Whoops." A cheeky smile spread across Tulio's lips. "I really hate this uniform, you know — can't wear sandals with it."

"Tell me about it," Sofia sighed, glancing down at her plain black shoes. "These are so _dull_. But hopefully the school will be a lot better? Yeah, I'm fairly sure it'll be pretty great."

"If you say so, Sof," Tulio said as he placed his hands on the nape of his neck. He cracked an eye open and beamed toward her. "It's good to have you here, by the way. I would've gone bonkers if Ángela or Eusebio had gotten in instead of you."

Sofia grinned. "Me too, you little hedonistic prick."

"What?"

"Nevermind, Tul." She smacked him with one of the cushions, which resulted in the boy smacking her with the one he had used to cover his face before. And with that, the two of them burst into laughter and simply relished for a few minutes on the idea of what was to come.

* * *

"Whoa," South whispered, a broad grin spreading across her face.

"What is it, South?" Jade asked as she rubbed her left eye. The journey from Vanuatu had been exhausting, to say the least, and they had only just arrived at Hogwarts.

"Uh, what are you two talking about," Levi said, stifling a yawn. "I think half of my brain got lost somewhere between here and Abu Dhabi." Using a portkey to Hogwarts all the way from Vanuatu technically exceeded the limit established by the International Wizarding Confederation, which meant that they had had to travel to Singapur first, then catch a portkey to the Emirates, where they finally found the final portkey that had taken them to their exchange school.

"It's just . . . the school grounds are _huge_," South muttered, her expression still a rather awed one. The hidden island where the Oceanian Wizarding community had decided to establish their school was a very small one and didn't leave much to the more outdoorsy students' imagination, which made the grounds and mountains surrounding Hogwarts look like paradise to South. "I can't wait to explore them all."

"Well, I can," Levi yawned. "Let's get some sleep first — then we can go explore, all right?"

"Okay, okay," South sighed as she picked up her backpack. She hardly felt tired at all, and wished her schoolmates would understand how she ached to go outside after all those hours stuck in dull, dim-lighted offices where they had to go fetch their portkey and convince the Ministry officers that they weren't illegal immigrants who wanted to get to the United Kingdom to escape the Australian authorities. "But I'm gonna go check that Whomping Willow thing first thing tomorrow."

"Be my guest," Jade joked, shaking her head.

Once they got to the common room, they saw that two of the exchange students were already there, both fast asleep on the couch — they both had tanned skin and frizzy black hair, and the boy's feet were resting on the girl's lap as they both dozed quietly. Levi placed his index finger on top of his lips and signaled for his two schoolmates to follow him upstairs, where they supposed their dormitories would be.

"Those two must be the Castelobruxo students," Jade whispered excitedly, a broad smile on her face. "They looked so peaceful."

"Must've been a long journey." Levi shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head towards the male dormitory. "This is mine, I think. The house elf said that yours was right upstairs, and that we boys weren't allowed inside. Suppose it's their way of preventing their students from shagging instead of going to class."

"Well, people are gay too, Levi," giggled South. "So they've failed miserably at that."

"That's a good point," Levi laughed. "Anyway, I'll see you guys later. I really do need to get some rest before dinner."

"All right, see you."

The two girls trotted upstairs once Levi disappeared behind the door. They could hear soft voices coming from their dormitory, and quietly wondered what their roommates would be like. The Castelobruxo girl had looked peaceful enough, but they were both itching to know them all already. They immediately spotted three different silhouettes when they entered the room — a small, Asian-looking girl, a white girl with caramel-coloured hair with pink-dyed tips, and a slightly younger girl with olive skin and long, wavy black hair.

"Hi!" South said brightly when she realized that all three girls were now looking at them. "I'm South, and this is Jade. We're the exchange students from Makutu — well, there's Levi too, but he stayed behind because of how he's, well, a guy and technically isn't allowed upstairs because of that. Which is bollocks, honestly, isn't it?"

"Yeah, we were just discussing that," the girl with the pink-dyed tips agreed, nodding her head, "It's just so . . . old-fashioned, to be honest. And I'm Callie, by the way! I'm one of the two Ilvermorny students."

"I gathered," Jade said, a smile spreading across her face as she eyed the eight beds. Callie and the other two girls had already picked one each, so she ended up placing her backpack on top of the one next to the olive-skinned girl's.

"I'm Chione," the girl said with a softer tone, but smiling nevertheless. "I study at Sahar Almadrasa, and I'm from Egypt."

"That's really cool!" South exclaimed as she placed her things on the bed next to Jade's. "I've always wanted to go to Egypt. My parents have been there like a million times, but . . . well, I don't get to see them that often anymore, so I don't really get to travel with them either."

"Oh, that's . . . " Chione's eyebrows rose, her expression clearly absolutely clueless as to what to say. "That's a shame, you really must miss them a lot."

South shrugged and did one of her broad, warm smiles, trying not to think about how she _did_ miss them a lot in spite of everything. "Nah, it's fine. Plus we're gonna be here for an entire year, so it's all good for me!"

"Yeah, that's bound to be pretty exciting," Jade agreed, nodding enthusiastically. She then glanced towards the Eastern Asian girl and asked, "What's your name?"

"I . . . I'm Miyako." The girl's cheeks had turned a bright red, although Jade and South really had no idea why. "Mahoutokoro student."

"Cool!" Jade grinned, then leaned back on her bed and placed her hands on the nape of her neck. "Merlin, I'm exhausted. I think I'm gonna lie down for a bit, all right?"

"Sure," Callie nodded, then glanced towards South. "You gonna stay here too? We were thinking of going downstairs — the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and Koldovstoretz students should be here sometime soon."

"Yeah, and you might get to meet Ziv. They're the other student from my school," Chione explained, a shy smile on her face.

"That sounds amazing!" South beamed, then picked up her wand and poked Jade on the cheek. "I'll come wake you up for dinner, you loser."

"Whatever." Jade chuckled and rolled around, burying her face in the pillow.

"All right then," Callie said. "Let's get going!"

Jade had fallen into a deep slumber before the other four had even left the room.

* * *

"I'm _loving_ this castle so far, let me tell you."

Vera grinned as the tips of her fingers grazed the walls of the corridor, the cold stone sending shivers down her spine. Jon, next to her, observed their surroundings with an equally curious expression.

"It really is something, isn't it," he muttered thoughtfully.

Vera and Jon had never really spent time together before — he was in the Year above her and usually hung out with the more popular kids, whereas she had a smaller group of close-knit friends and didn't really go out with the rest of her year when they were allowed outside on summer weekends, because of how the weather at Koldovstoretz was so extreme that they were practically secluded inside the immense _dacha_ that was their school during the winter months. Still, the few days that they had spent together on their school's official submarine on their way to Hogwarts had taught her that he was a generally nice person, soft-spoken yet incredibly charming — and that he spent a lot of hours in his room, humming to classical _Beszil_ music and tiptoeing silently with his ballet shoes on. He was a dancer, she had learned, and there was something about the way his eyes lit up whenever he spoke about Tchaikovsky or the Bolshoi that made her smile and wonder if she would ever feel half as passionate about anything as he did about dancing.

"I can't wait to meet the rest of the students," she said casually, a half-smile on her face. "I bet they're gonna be really cool kids."

"I suppose," Jon nodded. "Most of them will be top-notch students, that's for sure."

"It's not like you aren't though," Vera smiled. "Or at least that's what our _Direktor_ said."

"I'm all right, I guess," he replied, a small smile on his face. If he hadn't looked so confident about everything all the time, Vera would have thought that he was acting a little sheepish about it. She just offered him a kind smile and shrugged, her fingernails tapping against the walls ever so lightly, and with that they began to make their way upstairs in a rather comfortable silence.

When they were approaching the entrance to their common room, they heard how a pair of voices argued in a very rushed French.

"_C'est quoi le mot de passe?_"

"_Putain, Mona, j'sais pas._"

"_T'écoutes les autres ou quoi, connard?_"

Vera was surprised to see that the two students who were arguing right in front of the entrance to their common room were actually _very attractive_. The boy had big black curls and green eyes, and spoke with a husky voice that added more attractiveness to the general picture of him. The girl had equally black hair and bright red lips, with thick eyebrows that reminded Vera of some of the prettiest girls back at Koldovstoretz. She briefly glanced towards Jon, whose lips seemed to have twitched up at the sight of the two of them — she could tell that the two French students had caught his attention, too.

"Is everything all right?" Vera asked, her accent thick as she changed to English.

The girl was the first one to look up to her. She beamed and replied, with an equally thick accent, "No, it's all right! It's just that Henri here is a big fat _connard_ and can't remember the password."

"That's enough, Mona," Henri said, his brow furrowing. He glanced towards Jon, whose eyes were still on him, and did a slightly self-conscious nod before adding, "But yes, it'd be great if you could help us out."

"Sure," Vera said. "It's _pickle python_." The door grumbled in front of them, and the girl offered the other two students a half-smile. "See, it's done."

"_Pickle python_," echoed Ramona, her brow furrowing. "What does that even mean?"

"It doesn't have to mean anything, I guess," Jon offered. When Henri's eyes fell upon him, he quickly looked away and picked up his bags before following Vera into their new headquarters.

The common room was big, spatious and drenched in light. Koldovstoretz was a relatively small school — a lot of Russian students attended Durmstrang, and only the more liberal ones went to Koldovstoretz because of its more progressive values — and its location didn't allow them much exposure to daylight, especially during the winter, so the two Russian students couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement in their stomaches when they realized that Hogwarts would be a whole lot sunnier than their home school, which meant that they would get to go outside nearly every day.

A group of students had already huddled in a circle on the couches — a tanned boy was now sitting on the carpeted floor, whereas a group of five or six girls had taken a seat on the sofa and a couple of puffs. Looking a lot more alien to the conversation that the rest of the group was currently sharing, another girl flipped through the pages of a thick book, and was the first one to notice the newcomers' presence, and nodded in what intended to be a welcoming gesture.

"See what I told you?" Vera said, a faint smile on her lips. "Tons of cool kids, all packed into one dormitory. It's gonna be _insane_."

Jon just chuckled and shook his head a little, looking a whole lot more skeptical about it than his schoolmate. "We'll see about that, Vera."

And they would, in a way.

* * *

"C'mon, Head Boy — we're running late already."

Jimmy chuckled, waved a dismissive gesture at Elodie and then glanced towards his boyfriend, a somewhat cheeky smile on his face. "It's got a neat sound to it, doesn't it? _Head Boy_. How does it feel, being involved with someone as relevant as myself?"

Calvin just scoffed and did a half-smile at his boyfriend's antics. "Get your head out of your arse and go introduce yourself to those exchange students, Marston."

"Oi, show me some respect! I'm going to have to punish you if you keep misbehaving." Jimmy did yet another cheeky smile, his hand discreetly approaching Calvin's lower back until the Slytherin slapped it ever so lightly, which turned Jimmy's expression into a light pout.

"_Please _do put an end to this or kill me now, El," Celine mumbled next to her, her arms crossed and her expression feigning a disgust that showed up whenever one of the couples in their gang acted even remotely intimate around each other.

Elodie just snorted. "I just can't believe these two sometimes." She then cleared her voice and added, in a much louder tone, "James Marston! Let's get going, for Merlin's sake."

"All right, all right," Jimmy sighed, and grinned towards Calvin one last time before adding, "See you tomorrow, all right?"

Calvin placed a hand on his chin and pressed his lips against Jimmy's, which made the Gryffindor's freckled cheeks turn a bright red in spite of them having been together for well over a year. "See you tomorrow, love."

Celine just rolled her eyes and feigned irked noises before mumbling something about going to fetch Brooklyn and Simon, which left Jimmy and Elodie on their own after Calvin waved goodbye and trotted downstairs to the Slytherin dungeon. Jimmy flashed a smile towards Elodie, and the girl, in spite of how her friend got on her nerves sometimes, had to beam back at him before setting foot towards the exchange students' dormitory.

"So, how's your summer been?" She asked. "Haven't gotten much info from you after the barbecue at Thea's, and I don't think Maggie has, either. How was Copenhagen?"

"Oh, it was _fantastic_," Jimmy said brightly. Calvin's family lived in Copenhagen, and he had invited him over for a couple of weeks during the previous summer. Jimmy, in return, had showed him around York for the other half of the month of August. "It was sunny yet not too hot and the city's marvelous and there's tons of Wizarding pubs and a lot of stuff to do . . ."

"I hear Calvin's parents aren't home that much, so that must've been great too." Elodie elbowed him in a friendly manner. Even though she had never been in a relationship, she loved seeing how happy her friend was.

Jimmy's cheeks reddened ever so lightly. For a person who was so open and extroverted about everything, he was surprisingly shy when it came to talking about Calvin and the more intimate parts of their relationship. "Well, yeah, that was great. Especially because my family wouldn't get off our arses once we got to Ripon, so . . . " He chuckled, running a hand through his hair in a rather nervous way.

Elodie just grinned and hugged her friend by the waist. He had become one of her closest friends after what had happened the previous year, and she couldn't help but feel ecstatic about how adorable his relationship with Calvin was. "I'm so happy for you, Jimmy. And I'm so glad we're getting to be Head Students together!"

"Yeah, right? I can't believe McGonagall would trust me with such a responsibility," he laughed, shaking his head. "I mean, you? We all knew _you'd_ be Head Girl, but I honestly thought Calvin or Simon or some other Ravenclaw twat would get to be Head Boy."

"_Some other __Ravenclaw twat_," Elodie mimicked him, elbowing his side ever so lightly. "I'm flattered, Marston."

"Oh, you know what I mean," he snorted, but smiled nevertheless. "I'm glad I'm getting to do this with you, though. And . . . I call dibs on the bigger dormitory!"

"Oh, I absolutely _loathe_ you sometimes."

They both melted into a fit of giggles as they arrived to the portrait that would lead them into the exchange students' common room.

"All right, let's do this." There was a rather solemn expression on Elodie's face as she pronounced the password that Professor Longbottom had trusted them with earlier that night.

And with that they both peeked into a room where fifteen teenagers hung out like any other group of teenagers would. They were all spread out in smaller groups, the more introverted ones still looking a little anxious about having to introduce themselves to all those strangers all of a sudden, but the tone was generally light-hearted and even bright. They had already changed into the uniforms that their Headmistress had sent over to them before dinner, all fifteen of them wearing the black tie that First Years usually wore until the Sorting Ceremony. They were all more or less within the same age range — sixteen or seventeen, Elodie gathered from the way most of them looked — and seemed equally thrilled to be at Hogwarts.

"Um, hi," she cleared her throat, perhaps a little too briskly. All fifteen pairs of eyes fell upon her, which made her stomach churn. _Get a grip_. "Eh, hi. I'm Elodie. This is Jimmy — James. We're this year's Head Students here at Hogwarts and McGonagall has asked us to show you around and, well, sort of just be there for whatever you may need. So yes, we were thinking maybe we could take you on a small tour tomorrow after your classes? And feel free to ask any questions that you may have."

"Yeah, since we're a lot less imposing than McGonagall and all that," Jimmy added in his usual cheery tone that made a few of the exchange students giggle. He had a way with words, Elodie admitted to herself as she crossed her arms. "So . . . any questions?"

One of the more serious-looking boys put up his hand, and asked, "Are we going to go to _your_ classes? Or are we going to get private tutoring sessions with your professors?"

Elodie's eyebrows rose. "I don't see why you shouldn't come to our classes. Our professors will be happy to help you if there's anything that you may need after class, but I think you'll be able to handle it."

A few of the students chuckled, until another girl put up her hand and asked, "Are we allowed to go outside? Where to, by the way?"

"You're allowed outside as long as you don't leave the castle grounds," Elodie explained. "The Forbidden Forest is also, well, forbidden. Name's self-explanatory. But yes, other than that you're allowed to go wherever you please — oh, and you'll get to visit Hogsmeade on certain weekends. That's the little village nearby, there's a couple pubs and a few nice shops that I'm sure you'll enjoy."

"There's _shops _nearby," Jade whispered, looking clearly awed. Attending school in a tiny Vanuatu island meant staying away from all means of civilization for the entire school year, so the change definitely felt refreshing to her. "I can't wait to see what it's like."

"It's pretty dull once you've been there three or four times, but you know . . . the candy's still _mental_," Jimmy joked. "But anyway — feel free to drop by our dormitory if you need anything at all!"

"To those of you who are Sixth Years, we'll be happy to provide you with information on your coursework and assessments," Elodie added. "As for those of you who are Seventh Years like us . . . we'll see you around tomorrow for Charms or Transfiguration, I suppose!"

"Hooray," Tulio sighed, but grinned a mischievous smile when Sofia elbowed him.

The two Head Students stayed at their common room for a little longer, trying to memorize all fifteen names and asking endless questions about their home schools and countries. Quite a few of the exchange students were in fact very talkative — Levi and Jimmy were exchanging puns and Quidditch ideas in no time, and Elodie had quite a lot of fun getting to know all about how Castelobruxo and Ilvermorny worked — but even the more introverted students shared a bit of their past with them before they left. When they were in fact gone, all fifteen students exchanged quiet glances, silently wondering what their next step at Hogwarts should be.

"So," yawned South. "As much as I'd love to set up a party with the lot of you, I think I'm going to head off to bed — dammit, travelling around the globe can be _really _exhausting."

"Oh, really?" Jade deadpanned, but smiled nevertheless. "Yeah, I think I'm gonna go to bed too."

"Shouldn't we all?" Rhona replied, shrugging a little. "I mean, I hope y'all don't intend to stay up late every single day, 'cause we do need to get enough sleep."

"_We do need to get enough sleep_," mimicked Ramona — who was, in fact, dying to stay up and get to know her new schoolmates better. When Rhona glared at her, however, she just shrugged awkwardly and stuck her hands into her trousers (she had argued with the house elf who had brought their uniforms for over fifteen minutes about how it was sexist to assume that she wanted to wear a skirt with the rest of her uniform just because she was a 'female-alligned human being', until the poor thing had sighed in defeat and turned the skirts that she had brought for the girl into trousers).

"I think Rhona's right," Sofia agreed, in a more conciliatory tone. "We should get some sleep — we'll have plenty of time to drink Butterbeer and get to know each other better starting tomorrow."

Most of the group nodded in agreement, and with that the first few of them went upstairs, waving awkward goodnights to their new schoolmates. Tulio, Ramona, and Ziv were a little more hesitant about it, but ended up following the rest of the group upstairs.

"You know," Ziv said brightly as they glanced at the now-empty common room. "This might be fun after all!"

"Yeah, I really hope it is," Tulio said as he (failingly) tried to hold back a yawn. "Good night, little one."

"G'night!"

Tulio whisked his wand at the chandelier that lit the common room, and with that their first day at Hogwarts came to an end.

* * *

_So! Everyone's been introduced now. I didn't think I'd be done this early but yeah, I'm in love with this story and its characters already so here it is. Again, hope the lot of you enjoyed this chapter and that I portrayed your characters correctly — please do let me know if I didn't or if there's anything that I need to change and/or keep in mind for future chapters! Also, thanks a ton to everyone who reviewed the first one — it really does mean a lot to me, you know. :)_

_So yeah, that's it for now. Chapter three will be up soon, hopefully!_


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